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Cell Phone Leads to Suspect in Sex Attack

A Brooklyn man claiming to be a cabdriver robbed and tried to rape a woman he picked up as a fare yesterday, the police said.

The man, Bernard Brown, 32, of Clinton Avenue in Fort Greene, was captured because his victim grabbed a cellular telephone from the car and escaped down the street, said Lieut. Stephen Biegel, a Police Department spokesman. He said that police officers found the suspect after checking numbers in the phone's memory.

''His girlfriend's number came up, so officers camped outside her house, and he was captured a few blocks away,'' Lieutenant Biegel said. ''The witness then identified him as her attacker.''

Mr. Brown, who has spent much of the last 13 years in prison and has a history of robbery and rape charges, has been charged with attempted rape, unlawful imprisonment, robbery and menacing with a weapon, the police said. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office said. He was taken off parole in 1994.

The police said that Mr. Brown picked up the 22-year-old woman, whose name was not released because of the nature of the crime, at the corner of Pennsylvania and Sutter Avenues in East New York shortly after 3:15 A.M. yesterday.

She had just finished work at a pharmacy and was waiting at a bus stop to go home. Mr. Brown drove up in his brown station wagon and said he was a working as a cabdriver and could cheaply take her wherever she wanted to go, the police said.

But when she got into the car, the police said, Mr. Brown drove her to the corner of Glenwood Road and 99th Street in Canarsie. He pulled out a box cutter, forced her into the front seat and took two rings and a gold necklace from her, said Detective Joseph Pentangelo, another Police Department spokesman.

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After Mr. Brown tried to rape her, the woman managed to open the car door, grab his cell phone, flee down the street and call the police, Detective Pentangelo said.

When investigators were given the phone, they immediately punched its memory function and called the number that came up. It was for Mr. Brown's girlfriend. After telling her that they were pedestrians who had found the phone on the street, the investigators asked the girlfriend for her address, telling her they would return the phone. They then lay in wait outside her house, hoping Mr. Brown would show up. When he appeared a few blocks away, officers ran up and arrested him. The victim's jewelry and a box cutter were found in his pockets, Detective Pentangelo said.

''This arrest represents his fifth since 1984 and follows three convictions,'' he said.

In 1985, Mr. Brown pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon, paying a $500 fine before being placed on five years' probation, the police said. But less than two years later, he violated his probation and tried to rob someone with another weapon. He pleaded guilty, the police said, and was sentenced to prison for four to eight years.

Three months after he was released in 1990, the police said, he was charged with kidnapping a girl with intent to collect a ransom, as well as rape, sodomy, criminal possession of a weapon, acting in a manner injurious to a child and sexual abuse. It was not clear yesterday what charges Mr. Brown was convicted of, but the police said that he had spent three more years in prison.

Mr. Brown is not licensed with the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission, said Allan J. Fromberg, a commission spokesman. Unlicensed cabs are illegal, he added, and those who use them are taking a risk. ''These vehicles are an X factor, and we have no idea what's going on with them,'' he said. ''Taking them can be dangerous.''